Beard Zeitgeist

I was going to write a proper post about one of my prospective pet projects, but then I came upon this article about beards in Smart Set. It's not actually a good article, just more or less a random collection of trivia with the word beard in (also it mentions that Al Gore "got heavy" when his political career was over. She doesn't mean "heavy" like "whoa, heavy, man...," she means fat. If you're going to mention that at all, why not just say fat?) But I liked these bits:

I have never known my husband without his beard, a fact that disturbed me in the early years of our relationship. What was he hiding: a weak chin, a saber scar, a slothful nature, a psychological need for a barrier between himself and the world? But as time passed, I no longer felt the need to ask these questions. I now know my husband, and the beard is part of who he is...

It is interesting to think of the many great men in history who had beards: Socrates, Christ, Lincoln, Freud, Lenin (the first two represented at least as having them)...

The Orthodox of the religion have traditionally worn beards... But in the Talmud, the Jewish commentary on the Bible, the subject undergoes clarification and, predictably, grows more murky.